I have been attempting to practice heart opening techniques for years – to allow myself to not only give but receive love – with limited success
Despite my attempts in yoga and at home to arch my back and open my heart during, I saw very little improvement, until I started generously applying Fascia Release™ essential oil on the back of the heart.
As you may know, your heart is the center of all emotional and energetic healing, supporting feelings of compassion, forgiveness, acceptance, and unconditional love as well as the ability to move through life with grace, love and intention.
By opening the Heart and allowing energy to flow freely through it, you support open communication between the body and the brain. It also allows you to receive love and support from others.
It also fosters the free flow of energetic information throughout your Chakra system, connecting the three upper-body chakras – which supports transformation and integration – and three lower-body chakras – which are often associated with basic instinctual needs, including safety concerns.
If you are feeling disconnected, a lack of empathy, or an inability to trust oneself or others, heart opening might be helpful.
What Is Heart Opening?
Heart opening refers to the intentional effort to physically release fascial constrictions and adhesions around the heart to help open the heart for the healthy flow of emotional energy.
Heart opening can be achieved through physical movement (like heart opening yoga poses and backbends which allow your thoracic soft tissue to gently stretch, opening your heart space), topical application of essential oils – like Heart™ and Fascia Release™ blend – deep breathing techniques that expand your chest and rib cage, words, or intentional actions.
Essential oils, in particular, can help balance your heart both physically and emotionally. Fascia is a three-dimensional web of connective tissue that supports very deep layers tissue surrounding the physical heart. Heart opening allows the fascia and muscles surrounding the heart to help release its grip.
When the heart is open, you might experience more empathy, compassion, forgiveness, and love. When the heart is blocked, you might be more to feel more anger, grief, hatred, and jealousy.
Symptoms of Blocked Heart Energy
The symptoms of a blocked Heart energy may present both physically and emotionally, including:
Emotional symptoms include:
- Inability to love or be loved
- Unwillingness to forgive, let go or holding grudges
- Loneliness
- Depression
- Lack of emotional stability
- Jealousy
- Fear of intimacy
- Co-dependency
- Insecurity
- Withdrawing or closed down
- Defensiveness
- Selfishness
Physical symptoms include:
- Fatigue
- Confusion, impaired thinking
- Increased heart rate
- Lack of appetite, nausea
- Shortness of breath
- Persistent coughing or wheezing
- Buildup of excess fluid in tissues (edema)
Benefits Of Heart Opening
Emotional Release: Your heart serves as a “storage facility” within our body, remembering painful events and heartache from the past. Opening the heart may help release sadness, grief, anger and frustration stored in your body.
Increased Energy: The more you expand your sternum, rib cage and the rest of your upper body, the more blood, oxygen and nerve circulation will be freed up to invigorate you mentally and physically.
Improved Breathing: Physically opening your heart helps to expand your rib cage which helps to improve the flexibility of your lungs allows for a greater lung capacity, which in turn allows for increased oxygen to your brain, heart and muscles. Improving your lung capacity allows to you to take longer, deeper breaths, which helps alleviate anxiety and increase energy levels. The more you expand your sternum, rib cage and the rest of your upper body, the more blood, oxygen and nerve circulation will be freed up to invigorate you mentally and physically.
Reduced Pain: Heart opening helps to expand your thoracic cavity as well as your diaphragm, which separates your lungs and heart from the organs below. A tight diaphragm may cause the cervical and lumbar spine to overcompensate for the lack of movement in your mid back, contributing to lower back and neck pain. Heart opening also makes the rib cage more flexible which enhances the range of motion of thoracic spine, eliminating rigidity and pain.
Alleviate Depression: Heart opening can improve both posture and emotional health. Rounded shoulders and a hunched spine – a protective posture often designed to protect the heart – has been linked with depression. Researchers Wilhelm Reich and Alexander Lowen found a connection between physical posture and expression and feelings, noting that a forward collapsed chest relates to depression. They noted that “what we think and how we feel expresses itself in our physical posture, so our physical posture has an effect on our thoughts, our feelings, the image we portray, and the subsequent responses we receive from others.” Alleviating the need to protect against emotional wounds signals your body and brain that it is safe not to shut down or feel fatigued or depressed.
Essential Oils for Heart Opening
Heart™
Heart™ balances the heart to enhance compassion and support, integrate and reset all the systems of the body, including supporting feelings of open-heartedness, expansiveness, receptivity while mitigating loneliness, sadness and grief.
The heart integrates and balances the physical, emotional, and mental body, providing blood to every cell and every organ. It also serves as a complex information processing center, influencing brain function, the nervous system, hormonal system and most of the body’s major organs.
When any part of the body isn’t functioning at an optimal level, the heart has to work harder. For example, when the body is in a state of stress, it needs more oxygen which increases the heart rate. The heart is our body’s reset button, but a state of constant stress can fatigue the heart and compromise our ability to reset, leading to inflammation, infections, toxicity and heart disease. By returning the heart to balance, we support the cardiovascular and circulatory system, regenerate the structure of the heart and helping to reset the homeostatic mechanism for the entire body.
Heart™ blend contains a proprietary blend of organic and/or wild crafted essential oils that helps you show love to others and yourself. Research has shown that sweet smells, like those found in Heart™ blend, have been shown to reduce pain by activating the opioid receptors in the brain.
Fascia Release™
The issues are in the tissues, and before you can begin to unpack your blocked or stuck heart energy, you need to open up the space around your physical heart with fascia blend.
When you experience stress or heartbreak, part of you is resistance, which triggers you to physically contract, constrict, or pull away from a physical danger, a negative thought or an emotional aversion. In the process, you constrict and physically guard your heart in preparation for attack. When you do this, you internalize the fear without release or recovery. In short, energy doesn’t flow and your body constricts – which locks the stress in your body.
Topically applying Fascia Release™ over the physical heart – with focused application and both above on the clavicle bones in sweeping outward motions and in a gentle vertical caress from your throat and the sides of your neck down over and below the heart – opens the space to allow energy and emotions to flow down and out of your system. You can also apply over the back of your heart.
Affirmations for Heart Opening
Positive affirmations in combination with the topical application of essential oils and the following affirmations may help enhance heart opening:
- “I deeply and completely love and accept myself.”
- “I am wanted and loved.”
- “My heart is open to love.”
- “I forgive myself.”
- “I live in a state of grace and gratefulness.”
Featured Oils:
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